Posts in category Book Review

A wonderfully engaging and readable book about the confusions, contradictions and challenges involved in the practice of ancient traditions and rituals in a rapidly-changing, fast-paced modern India.

An ash-smeared Naga sadhu trekking the route to Kedarnath who also happens to be an MBA graduate and was once a sales manager for Kelvinator.

A prison warden in Kerala who spends most of the year keeping his head down and trying to navigate a safe path through the violent political rivalries of far-right and far-left prisoners, but for two months every year becomes a vessel for divine possession as a theyyam dancer.

A sculptor of temple bronzes in Tamilnadu who can trace his lineage through an unbroken line of sculptors right up to the times of the Chola dynasty under Rajaraja I, but must reconcile himself to his son’s career choice of becoming a computer engineer in Bangalore.

A young woman brought up in a privileged environment within the folds of a loving joint family, who renounces her home and family for the difficult life of a Jain nun and must now grapple with one final attachment – her grief over the death of a sister nun, her close companion and co-traveler in the path of Jain monkhood.

A Tibetan monk who renounced his monastic vows to take up arms against the Chinese incursion only to be swept along by the political tides of the subcontinent and find himself in the Indian Army fighting in the 1971 war to which he has no ideological connection, and now, in his old age, lives a simple life in Dharmashala making prayer flags as penitence for the violence he committed, reconciled to the fact that he will not go back to a free homeland in his lifetime.

A renowned tantric living in a cremation ground in Tarapith, West Bengal, in a hut filled with cured skulls used to summon the spirits of the dead, who is reluctant to speak to journalists about his work because his sons, successful ophthalmologists in New Jersey, have forbidden him from doing so.

A bhopa from Rajasthan whose tribe of ballad singers, despite being illiterate themselves, have kept an invaluable part of our literary heritage virtually intact through centuries by passing down many lesser-known epic-poems and ballads from generation to generation in the oral tradition.

Through the lives of these and other people, Dalrymple, with his trademark insight and sensitivity, once again shows us a subcontinent that refuses to be tied down by simplistic definitions, and an India that has and will always defy all manners of generalization.

The book opens with the poem ‘Caelica 83’ by Baron Fulke Greville and these two lines remained with me throughout the book.

This is a book that speaks about life and about death and especially about that grey area in between — of sickness — that everyone must navigate their way through at some point in time or the other – whether as patients, doctors, family, caregivers, or friends – to emerge on either one side or the other.

It is also a book that illuminates the doctor-patient relationship in its purest form, shorn of all the different connotations and implications that modern living, technology, corporatization, and so on have attached to it. It is, at its most fundamental level, a relationship of trust, compassion and faith between two imperfect humans. At times, the doctor can seem all-powerful, interceding with fate on behalf of his patient, and bringing him back to life and health. At other times, the doctor and patient are “no more, and no less, than two people huddled together, as one faces the abyss.”

A heart-wrenchingly honest book by a young doctor who became a patient and ultimately lost his life to cancer, it does not in any way attempt to gloss over raw human emotions. There is the palpable disappointment, the feeling of cosmic injustice that after a decade of backbreaking hard work and commitment, training to be a neurosurgeon, when he is within reach of the dreams and goals he has set for his life, he should find himself terminally ill, a patient, on the opposite side of the doctor-patient equation than the one he had envisioned.

“My life had been building potential, potential that would now go unrealized. I had planned to do so much, and I had come so close.”

“Death, so familiar to me in my work, was now paying a personal visit. Here we are, finally face-to-face, and yet nothing about it seems recognizable.”

There is confusion, and also acceptance: “Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But, now I knew it acutely… The fact of death is unsettling. Yet, there is no other way to live.”

The epilogue, written by his wife Lucy after his death, is equally poignant and honest, and shows the immense power of humans to adapt, to even transcend their circumstances and to find the moments of pure joy that life sprinkles even amidst the harshest of tribulations. Their love for each other shines through the book.

“We each joked to close friends that the secret of saving a relationship is for one person to fall terminally ill. Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love…”

Paul “would, throughout his illness, work hard to secure my future. He was fiercely committed to ensuring the best for me, in our finances, my career, what motherhood would mean. At the same time, I worked hard to secure his present, to make his remaining time the best it could be…”

“At home in bed a few weeks before he died, I asked him ‘Can you breathe okay with my head on your chest like this?’ His answer was ‘It’s the only way I know how to breathe.’”

Finally, it is a book about life and about death, and about facing both with love, courage and integrity.

This is a book that reimagines the refugee/migrant crisis with a touch of magical realism in the form of “doors” that appear all over the world opening into different countries and continents. The doors that lead to the “nice” places are, of course, guarded and barricaded and difficult to get through, but still large numbers manage to slip through. With the doors making meaningless sieves of national borders, the very existence of separate nation-states is brought into question.

The story starts in an unnamed strife-torn country where two young people – Saeed and Nadia – fall in love amidst increasing chaos and approaching civil war.

“It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class … but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles, until the instant when it does.”

Saeed lives with his parents in a typical middle-class household. His parents – a schoolteacher and a university professor – have both “chosen respectable professions in a country that would wind up doing rather badly by its respectable professionals”, so that with the worsening situation and no means to get his family out to safety, his father is left to wonder whether “the far more decent path would have been to pursue wealth at all costs.”

Meanwhile, war looms ever closer with “front lines defined at the level of the street one took to work, the school one’s sister attended, the house of one’s aunt’s best friend, the shop where one bought cigarettes.”

When an opportunity to leave presents itself in the form of a door, Saeed’s father insists on remaining behind, knowing he will only compromise their chances of survival — “he had come to that point in a parent’s life when, if a flood arrives, one knows one must let go of one’s child, contrary to all instincts that one had when one was younger, because holding on can no longer offer the child protection, it can only pull the child down, for the child is now stronger than the parent and the circumstances are such that the utmost of strength is required” (such a poignant, heart-breaking sentence, that.)

The story then follows Saeed and Nadia as they traverse the unfamiliar trajectories of migration from Mykonos to London to California, living in limbo for long periods, surrounded by other transients much like themselves such that no long-lasting friendships or bonds can be formed, and their own bond becomes as much a source of grating irritation as of solace and comfort.

For me, the story began to flag almost as soon as Saeed and Nadia stepped through that first door and left their home country. After a point, I failed to stay invested in them and in what became of their relationship.

There was also a marked shift in the narrative from the specific to the generic, and even there it was whimsical and unconvincing at times.

A case in point: There is a build-up to an imminent face-off, a hopelessly one-sided confrontation, between the military and riot police in London and the migrants who have taken over some neighbourhoods. After a brief skirmish, the military retreats and electricity and water is restored to the migrant-held areas. The author suggests that the powers-that-be “…had understood that the denial of coexistence would have required one party to cease to exist, and the extinguishing party too would have been transformed in the process, and too many native parents would not after have been able to look their children in the eye, to speak with head held high of what their generation had done.”

Perhaps I’m being cynical but that seemed to me a rather simplistic interpretation, more like wishful thinking. I wonder if, when push comes to shove, such considerations will ever stop anyone. If history is any guide, hasn’t mankind committed some of its worst blunders and atrocities with its head held high? Regrets come much later, sometimes several generations later, if at all.

After a superb beginning that evoked the realities of a city slowly falling apart, the remaining story did not engage me, but the beautiful writing most certainly did. As you might have already gauged from the quoted extracts, the lyrical prose, strewn with little nuggets of wisdom and sparkling insights, makes the book well worth the time, and in all, it was a very satisfying read.

I took my time with this one. It is a book to be savoured not just for the story, but also for the beauty of its narration.

The story seamlessly weaves between two time-lines – Word War II and the years immediately preceding it — and I loved how masterfully the events and little revelations in each timeline inform and enhance the reading experience of the other as the story proceeds.

With Germany’s growing aggression, the tension slowly builds up till the Parisian air practically crackles with it. People go about their normal lives, but always, there is the undercurrent of rumour and anxiety. And then, finally, this one stunning, simple sentence – “The war drops its question mark.”

The story is about three ordinary people brought together by war.

There is Marie-Laure, a blind girl whose father has constructed a miniature wooden replica of the town of St. Malo for her to help her find her way around the real one. Like Marie-Laure, the reader too has likely not seen St. Malo with his/her own eyes. But, the book brings the walled city and its people to life in a vividly visual, sensual manner – the cathedral with its perforated spire down whose length “the flock of pigeons cataract”, the star-shaped ramparts, the rows of houses studded with chimneys, the market, the baker’s, the pebbled beach leading to the ocean that “sucks and booms…shifts and dilates and falls over itself”. And as Marie-Laure walks her fingers down the streets of the miniature model, naming them one by one, you realize that this must how she sees St. Malo in her mind – a living, breathing place, full of sights, sounds and smells.

There is Werner, a whiz-kid with a natural flair for electronics. Growing up listening to a science program on a discarded radio that he manages to fix, he does not want anything to do with war. All he wants is “string and spit and wire and a voice on the radio offering a loom on which to spin his dreams.” But, his talent with radios makes him a valuable cog in the German war machinery.

And, there is Etienne, a man who is still tormented by the ghosts of the First War, so much so that he has been afraid to set foot outside his house in two decades. Yet, this frightened, traumatised, isolated man suddenly finds himself in the know of all that is happening in town, as he is co-opted into one of the most dangerous jobs there is – using his homemade radio transmitter to send news of townsfolk to their families, and clandestine military secrets to the Allies, across the water in England.

In all, it is a beautiful story about the innocence, courage and humanity that war slowly drains away, and also about the innocence, courage and humanity that, despite it all, remains.

Book Review: We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

The narrator has a psychologist father who tries to incorporate a lesson into everything, an overwrought mother, a missing brother who’s being sought by the FBI for arson, a sister who’s also missing. The book starts out feeling like a story about yet another dysfunctional family. And, in a way, it is. Except that it’s a very different family and, in fact, the very definition of ‘family’ evolves over the story.

The thing I liked most about this book is the way the writer plays with details – revealing some, hiding others till later; readers are allowed to make assumptions, only to have them startlingly turned on their head a few chapters down the line. In fact, it is only in Part 2, Chapter 5 that, in the course of one innocuous-looking sentence, it suddenly hits you who the sister actually is.

The book is largely about memories – the protagonist’s memories of the first five years of her life – and the story structure and narrative style is especially effective in depicting the nebulous, shifty nature of memory. In the story of one’s life, memory can be an unreliable narrator. Memories come to slowly replace the original events they represent, even though the memories themselves are not immutable – happy memories become brighter over time, tinged with nostalgia, while the more uncomfortable ones slowly morph into something more palatable, or are completely suppressed. For example, in the book, different characters have very different memories of some of the events that happened in the past, and it’s never clear whose version is the right one.

The protagonist suspects his mother and uncle of scheming to kill his father. Plot sound familiar? And quite appropriately, the book opens with the verse from Hamlet from which it derives its name: “Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…” Except, in this case, the protagonist is a foetus, still in his mother’s womb and involuntary party and witness to the murder plot.

Within a few deft pages, McEwan establishes the premises of the story – the foetus’ growing awareness of the world he’s about to enter thanks to the radio programmes and podcasts his mother listens to and the conversations he can’t help eavesdropping on, the way he builds associations between objects and concepts he has not yet seen and experienced, and so on – within which the reader can happily suspend disbelief and enjoy the story. McEwan wisely refrains from using a child’s voice for the foetus. Thus, the voice in which the story is narrated is contemplative, humorous, cynical, already a tad world-weary.

Even as the unborn child is keenly aware of the immediate problems, the personal chaos he will soon be born into, he also has to deal with a growing awareness of trouble brewing in the world at large. McEwan touches upon topics like terrorism, the refugee crisis, political correctness, and so on, and, while his takes on these topics are interesting in themselves and, in most cases, blend with the story, in some instances, they do tend to stick out as unnecessary digressions.

In all, McEwan’s precise writing is a pleasure to read as always, and the book is a short, fast-paced and enjoyable read.

This five-book series is a great read for lovers of historical fiction. The first four books cover the life of Julius Caesar and the fifth is set in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. The author has taken a few liberties with historical facts and timelines (the inaccuracies are listed in the Author’s Notes at the end of each book) and this review deals only with the story as presented in the books.

Julius Caesar is a complex character to depict and Iggulden does a great job showing us his different facets. We see the young Caesar, full of youthful optimism, ideals and pride in the Roman Republic, rising to power thanks to his boundless energy and personal charisma. He applies his keen intellect with equal ease to war strategy, statecraft and politics, governance and organization, technology and even astronomy, managing to find time between his myriad obligations to reform the Roman calendar with the Julian one. He is driven and ambitious, yet, capable of deep introspection, of rising above the chaos of the moment to be able to comprehend the colossal waste of conflict, whether in his regret at the crucifixion of thousands of rebels all along the via Appia in the brutal aftermath of Spartacus’ slave rebellion or in his sorrow at the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. Yet, his ideals begin to give way to the lure of ever-greater power and each personal victory is marked by a matching rise in ambition. His internal conflict is best illustrated when he pauses on the banks of the Rubicon to weigh his choices. He is not new to war or bloodshed, but in crossing the Rubicon, he knows he will be marching his legions not against an enemy, but against Rome itself. He weighs his personal ambition against the thousands of lives that will inevitably be lost and countless more marred by a bloody civil war, and his decision is a matter of history.

The other superb portrayal in the book is of another equally complex character – Marcus Brutus. Caesar’s childhood friend, he starts out being intensely loyal, on one instance, even giving up command of a legion he has almost single-handedly built to Caesar without a second thought. He unquestioningly supports Caesar in both his political manoeuvring as well as military conquests. There is a degree of expected rivalry between the friends, but all Brutus wants, finally, is to be acknowledged by Caesar as an equal. Caesar, however, is occupied with his own plans and ambitions and fails to see this. For a reader who already knows how this particular friendship will end, there are multiple occasions in the book where you wish you could shake Caesar by the shoulders and tell him to stop taking his friend for granted. And perhaps Caesar does realize it, though belatedly, after Brutus goes over to the side of his rival, Pompey, in the Roman civil war. Because, when Pompey’s forces are defeated, Caesar, in an uncharacteristic move, pardons Brutus and even re-admits him into his inner circle. Ironically, it is this act of kindness, and perhaps of atonement, that seals the fate of their friendship. In public imagination, Brutus goes from being an admired military general to being the man Caesar forgave despite his treachery. His first betrayal, with Pompey, is more a hot-headed, impulsive reaction to Caesar’s favouring Mark Antony over him yet again. After Caesar’s pardon, though, the bitterness and hatred really begins to set in, and from then on, there is almost a sense of inevitability to every step that he takes on the path that ultimately leads to the Ides of March.

There are many interesting women in the story, but the narrative arc and blistering pace of the story sweeps past them all — Cornelia (Caesar’s first wife), Servilia (Brutus’ mother and Caesar’s mistress) and even Cleopatra, leaving us with mere glimpses of their strong personalities. One character I would have liked to have seen and heard more of is Julia, Caesar’s daughter by his first wife Cornelia. Between a mother who dies early and a father who is away on distant conquests for years on end, she has a lonely upbringing, and is married off early to Pompey, consul of Rome and many years her senior. It is a political match, of course, with Caesar trying to protect and consolidate his position in Rome during his lengthy absences, leading conquest in Gaul and beyond. But the political winds turn. Iggulden portrays Julia as being alive and present in Greece during the civil war between her father and her husband (in reality, she is believed to have died before the event), but assigns only a vague and tangential role to her in the scheme of things.

Finally, any story of ancient Rome is incomplete without its legions. War, by its very nature, is chaotic and difficult to pin down in neatly penned paragraphs. But, here is where Iggulden excels. On the one hand, he shows the awe-inspiring discipline of the legions and military precision of everything that governs their lives, right from setting up camps at the end of long marches, legion hierarchies, security precautions, signalling systems, to the mind-boggling minutiae of preparing for battle. At the same time, he manages to precisely convey the chaos of the battlefield –the handful of days, or even hours, when two sides ultimately clash to determine the fate of all the months of preparation and marching. Life is cheap on the battlefield, every erroneous command leading to needless lives lost, commanders have their horses killed under them and are unable to see the action enough from ground level to guide their troops, instructions are lost in the chaos or reach the frontlines too late to make a difference, a few men turning and running at the frontlines spirals into the rout of an entire legion. At one point in Gaul, Caesar retreats in the dark from a legion of his own men, believing them to be the enemy due to a mistake by an inexperienced scout. (I thought this was a fictional element, but turns out from the Author’s Notes, something like this actually happened) Iggulden succeeds in at once giving readers a bird’s eye view of the action as well as plunging them right into the thick of things.

In all, a well-narrated, riveting story with a familiar underlying theme – the one oft-repeated lesson of history that humans, whether as empires, nations or individuals, seem completely incapable of ever learning – how idealism, energy and self-belief are slowly transformed by time and power into greed and arrogance that make them blind to their own fallibility and lead ultimately to their downfall.